Well, shoot. I don't know how Phil d'Conch got a bee up his ass, but I guess he did. I worked as a federal investigator in the Central Valley of California for over 20 years, and did many security clearance investigations for many agencies of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, including the Agricultural Marketing Service, which uses marketing orders to regulate the sale of dairy products and fruits and vegetables. I got to know all aspects of Central Valley agriculture quite well - and I had previously done agricultural intelligence work in Berlin in the Army Security Agency. And I came from Wisconsin, another farm state. I've baled hay and milked cows and driven tractors and shoveled manure. And I've read the ag news in Central Valley newspapers every day since 1980.

That's why I was so interested in Woody Guthrie's "Deportees," and that's why I have been researching the song since 1996. I read dozens of newspaper accounts of the crash and tracked down and communicated with the principal reporter for the Associated Press. I went to the site of the 1948 plane crash; and I visited the memorial at the mass grave of the victims in Fresno, that I had donated money to erect.

These facts are clear:

• Excess produce that exceeds market order is dumped when it can't be used for alternative purposes (although less now than in 1948)
• When there is a pilferage problem with dumped produce, the produce is sometimes mixed with noxious substances to make it inedible and unsaleable.

This is common knowledge in the Central Valley. The most common "noxious substances" are lime and fuel oil - and government authorities object to fuel oil because it is environmentally unsafe.

I have found mention of creosote only in Steinbeck and Guthrie, but it's a likely substance to be used (because it is readily available on farms and is similar to fuel oil in effect) - and it has a more poetic sound than "lime" or "fuel oil." We give "poetic license" to songwriters in such cases, unless we are politically-motivated literalists.

And that's the point that applies to this thread. Folk songs, like all literature, cannot be understood by literalists who are interested only in the so-called "facts" of an event. Songs and literature are meant to convey an understanding and appreciation of the emotional and personal impact of an event, not the legal "facts." Whether the produce was mixed with lime (most likely) or creosote is immaterial. Both made it impossible for farmworkers to sell or consume the produce, and that wasn't likely to make farmworkers or their supporters (like Woody and Steinbeck) happy. As for me, I see both sides of the issue - that of the farmer who wants to keep a business alive, and that of the farmworker who wants to supplement family income. I've interviewed dozens of Central Valley farmers and farmworkers, and I respect and sympathize with both.

No, I wouldn't expect Woody Guthrie or John Steinbeck to be historians, but they produced literature and song that illustrated their eras and environs very well and gave a human understanding of events that historians often cannot supply.

-Joe Offer-